Chapter Asr – Part 1

103:1 “Consider the flight of time!”

According to the conditions of the time of revelation, Arabic must have been an appropriate language of that time. However, I expect my Creator to speak to me with a human language that I understand:

The Creator can speak to me in various ways that I can grasp.
The Creator speaks to me according to my capacity.

I must read the Quran from my perspective. By definition God is Absolute; imagine Him speaking from His perspective and I must struggle to understand His mind. That is Irrational! His capacity is infinite. Hence, He must speak to me according to my capacity and tell me what my responsibility is.

I take testimony under the witness of “asr” or the concept of “time.” Some may take the “moon” as a witness or something else (olive and figs or anything else in creation). My Creator is insinuating: “These are My witnesses which points to the fact that what I am telling is true”.

My responsibility: Let me check the truthfulness of what I see in the Quran, under the witnessing of olives, for example.
Study the olive and investigate what qualities are included in olives. Then, you will understand the main message of the Quran and that it is true.
That is the witnessing of the creation coming from an Absolute Speech. Is there any other way to understand a Speech, which by definition, is not coming from the universe? Isn’t that strange for the human being to confirm the existence of something which is not of the universe by a witness which is not within the universe?
Taking the oath of anything in creation or swearing about its truthfulness can only be experienced in physical form as far as my experience is concerned. Then, I understand that this “swearing” statement is only possible by Someone who controls the whole universe under His domain.

How can I check if a text is coming from beyond the universe?

What is wrong with the following statements:
How am I going to challenge God’s Speech since my knowledge is very narrow?
Can I come up with my own reasoning to challenge His Speech?
Answer: I can only confirm that the statement is God’s Speech only after confirming the truthfulness of the word or Its Speech (message) after witnessing its truthfulness by the act presented in the universe. Any part of the universe must have been given the evidence by its Maker who Speaks to human beings and teaches them what the universe is witnessing.

What does the Quran encourage me to do?

Examine the olive. In order to give existence to one olive, you will understand how an Absolute Power and Will is behind the existence of the olive.

Famous saying: “Anything that has a beginning must have an end”.

Does infinity in Mathematics have a beginning number?
No, similarly, the Absolute has no beginning and end.

Some people say that the universe seems to be Eternal. Quran always brings in evidence from what has happened before, so human beings can use their reasoning and examine the present time. Example, when argument is raised by the Quran on, “how can we be resurrected i.e. we will be given life back again in another type of creation according to my expectations and wishes? Some simple-minded Philosophers do not question existence and say that “afterlife” is a wishful thinking. Well, where did you get the quality of “wishful thinking”, even it was a wishful thinking? We need to question the Source of Existence of this “wish.” (How did you develop the notion of an Authoritative/father figure in the analogy of knowing that the father takes care of you? This is another topic.)

However, you WONDER: “WHO WILL RESURRECT ME?”
Do you exist now?
Where did you get existence? The One who gave you existence must fulfill the Promise of what He has put within your human capacities to hope for an Eternal Happiness. Because when you study your own creation, you see that your existence needs an Absolute Source. So, does the “the hope for an Eternal Happiness.”

Future is examined by human beings as you confirm present time. Can I believe that after I die, I will be resurrected by just hearing this news from a man? No, Quran says that you cannot examine the future. Rather, what you are experiencing in the physical world, put it in the lab and study how things are happening. This is essential for us to understand what is going on in the universe. Hence, why should the question “What is the Source of Existence of happenings?” be not an important question? The Qur’an speaks about the “resurrection” by pointing out what has already been created in front of human eyes.

Read the Quran in order to get guidance on how to examine creation to get answers to my “how” questions. It always refers the human mind to examine “How” the things are coming into existence?

“Asr” means squeezing i.e. day is fleeting and human beings know that they do not have much time left before night. Also, it means that time is passing i.e. fleeting time. Time is extremely squeezed because the reality of the creation that we experience here is very temporary. That is, we cannot catch anything here and keep it as long as we wish.

What does ‘time’ mean for you?

Act of creation that is taking in front of my eyes that I experience. That creation is an act which is never stable and is always moving, like drawing a line rather than making dots with intervals. The act of creation is a continuum with no pause. That demonstrates that the Actor is not bound to time and space, which means It is Infinite, or Absolute.
Whatever I experience in this world by its own nature demonstrates that nothing has the capacity to remain in existence by itself.
“I exist but my existence is continuously fleeting.”

For human capacity, we cannot find a word to define or determine time. We can only talk about sequences of acts of creation with no break because nothing has a stable existence. Which physicist can claim that they can hold time? Our reality is a fleeting reality. What we are experiencing is not the substantial existence, rather “act of substantial creation”. The universe itself witnesses that “asr” is fleeting time (not giving an opportunity to grab it) and consequently proves that I am nothing but an action. This action is performed by something that must be infinite. If it was finite, its action must be measurable. No one can measure the existence of time for a moment. Neither can anyone measure the existence of space. That is why we talk about space-time. In mathematics the necessity of using the approximations is the sign of not grasping the nature of anything which exists by itself. They are all given existence by an Eternal Existence Giver.

What is quantum? Something appears, and, in its appearance, it disappears.

Everything points to the truthfulness of the Actor. That is, Actor must be infinite. If Actor was finite, act would also be finite at every moment. Thus, we would be able to measure the time and space independently. Whatever I desire is from Him and He will take care of it. He created the wishful thinking of Eternal Happiness and it must be fulfilled by the Source of Existence of this wish which cannot exists out of nothing. It needs a Source of Existence, and it must have a purpose in its existence like any thing else in the universe.

“O our Lord! You have not created this (universe, or a particular thing that one ponders over its existence) without meaning and purpose.” Qur’an, 3: 191

What you call time is really talking about the continuum of the existence, therefore, the Absoluteness of its Originator? Is there anything fixed here in the universe even for a fraction of a second? No.

We cannot put a number in order to explain the duration of the existence of anything. Human capacity in order to interact with physical world has to put a number which is nothing but an approximation. We cannot measure the existing time of anything because it changes in its existence with no time limit. Life span of any moment cannot be measured here as far as the act of creation is concerned which points to the Actor/Creator is Absolute.

I am not holding the olive, rather the qualities of the Absolute are manifested in the olives. One olive is enough to demonstrate that its Creator is Absolute. Human consciousness witnesses to the qualities of the Creator of that olive.

Have the right methodology to understand the Speech of the Creator. We need to free our minds with biases such as denial or accepting any idea without experiencing and confirming. Look at the world that you live in and you will inevitably come to a conclusion that this universe must have an Absolute Source of Existence.

Next week we will study the content of the following verse as it is related to the verse (103: 1) which is under discussion:

45:24 “And yet they say: There is nothing beyond our life in this world. We die as we come to life, and nothing but time destroys us. But of this they have no knowledge whatever: they do nothing but guess.”